Things I Love: Kitchen Update Edition

I recently got a new dishwasher!  Sadly, I do not have a photo of the new dishwasher.  It pretty much looks like every dishwasher you have ever seen, except in black.  (Unless the dishwasher you were picturing in your mind was already, in fact, black in color.  In which case it looks exactly like that.)

We do not have a ton of cabinet space in our kitchen.  We used to have four cabinets, and now that we have a new dishwasher, we are down to only three.  This can make storing basic kitchen items (pots, pans, dishes, food - in case you weren't certain what "basic kitchen items" referred to) challenging.  Fortunately, my smart, handsome, and talented husband was up to the challenge.  He designed and built this handy-dandy spice rack on the back of our basement door (which is conveniently located next to our stove):

He was assisted in his task by an extremely adorable little helper:

I cannot get over their respective cuteness.

Things I Love: Poetry (Sometimes)

I was recently inspired by a friend to make a 40x40 list: 40 things I want to do by the time I'm 40 (Which is ridiculously close, in my opinion - when did true adulthood sneak up and smack me upside the head with its grey hairs and back pain?  It's quite rude, really.  I'm pretty sure I just got my undergraduate diploma yesterday.  The Alumni Association seems to think so, at any rate.)

Anyway, one of the items on my list is to read an entire book of poetry; a second item is to memorize a poem.  I've never really been much into poetry, to be honest.  But I think some of that had to do with my youthful need for things to be black and white - for it all to make sense and mean something clear cut and understandable.  Prose is better for that.  Poetry can be frustratingly vague and I-don't-know... snobby.  (There.  I said it.)

Recently I've also come to suspect that I've been reading the wrong poetry - wrong for me, anyway.  We can't all be fans of Leaves of Grass.  (I've tried, people!  Honestly, I have.)

So. I'm currently in search of poetry that I find beautiful.  Poetry that doesn't make me want to smack my head on the wall over and over with boredom or in the frustrating throes of whatdoesitmean, whatdoesitmean, whatdoesitMEAN!  I posted one quite awhile back that I love very much.  And then, a few days ago, a friend posted the following poem as her facebook status.  And I fell in love again.

Isn't poetry supposed to be the food of love?

Lodged

The rain to the wind said,
You push and I'll pelt.
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

Robert Frost
West-Running Brook
1928

Things I Love, Part 2

The current view from my living room window:

Things I Love

Well, for starters:
This kid.

I love her many facial expressions.

I love the way she's mixed up the words "boo boo" and "ouchie" and now refers to all little scrapes and bruises as "boobies."

I love how she calls her dearly beloved bunny "Bun" and anything that looks remotely like Charlie Brown's dog "Snoop."

I love how I could hear her shouting across the entire bookstore this morning, "Mommy! Something's coming out of my bottom!" I love that - I really do. It made me laugh. She makes me laugh, when very few other things do.

I love that she is one hundred percent completely herself. I love that she has not yet learned to care about what she sees in the mirror. I even love that she has a knack for saying the very wrong thing at the very wrong time. Someday she will grow out of that, and I will miss it.

I love that she does not accept easy answers even as I want to strangle her for asking yet another question.

And I love that wherever she is, it is easy to see, to remember, the whole earth really is filled with His glory. Not just Notre Dame Cathedral, but McDonald's. Not just the Grand Canyon, but a broken-down playground in Nowheresville, USA.

What a gift that is!

What a gift she is, to me.